Postcards from the Raj

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Richard Runnels tracked the rare paintings of the Johnston collection, shedding some light on life in 19th century India.Photo: Cathryn Tremain

A Melbourne musician's passion for antique Indian paintings
propelled him on a fascinating journey through colonial history to
life today on the subcontinent. Mary Ryllis Clark reports.

In India, antique paintings are held intimately in the hand,
passed around and admired. Like rare jewels, they are kept in
special folding boxes tied with ribbons. Leaves and twigs selected
for their insect repelling properties and scattered between them
keep them in perfect condition.

For Richard Runnels, author of Indian Painters - British
Masters, such paintings have become the abiding interest in his
life, together with a genre that emerged in the days of the British
Raj known as Company Paintings. It is the eight remarkable Company
Paintings in Melbourne's Johnston collection that are the subject
of this elegant book.

As a teenager in Cincinnati, Ohio, Runnels first heard and loved
Indian music when Ravi Shankar played there in the mid 1960s.
Although he went on to study classical Western music at university,
he took numerous courses on India, its culture and history.

Now principal horn in Melbourne's Orchestra Victoria, Runnels'
musical career has taken him around the world. It was while
travelling with the Vienna Chamber Music Group between Europe and
Australia in 1978 that he first set foot in India.

He loved the differences, the old Hindu temples, highly
decorative Indian Gothic Raj architecture; women in beautiful
saris; marvellous, aromatic food. Even the air smelled different.
"You could walk out of a restaurant and see an elephant wander past
with an advertisement painted on its side."

Runnels has been back many times and over the years his focus of
interest has narrowed to painting. "Indian art has never been as
popular internationally as art from other Asian countries,
consequently it's not easy to track down good Indian paintings.
Outside London, not many museums have good collections, although
there are some fine examples in the National Gallery of Victoria
and the Art Gallery of NSW."

When he talks about Indian painting Runnels is referring to what
is known as the great period in Indian art from 1550 to 1850.
Painted in glowing colours extracted from plants, cow manure, rocks
and soil, subjects were idealised scenes from stories of the gods
and classical culture, or religious allegories.

If you wanted to send a snapshot home you commissioned an Indian artist to paint scenes from your daily life . . .

Company Paintings are in a very specific style and were painted
between 1750 and 1850. The "Company" refers to the East India
Company, which founded the city of Calcutta in 1690, marking the
beginning of more than 200 years of British dominance on the
subcontinent.

"There were no postcards or cameras in India during the early
years of British occupation," says Runnels. "If you wanted to send
a snapshot home you commissioned an Indian artist to paint scenes
from your daily life, a life so much more exotic than the one you
led in England."

Bill Johnston, the noted antique collector who left his East
Melbourne home, Fairhall, to be run by an independent trust as a
house museum, often went to India hunting bargains among the
antiques left behind by the British and fashionably taken up by
many wealthy Indian families. But Runnels believes it likely that
the eight paintings in the Johnston collection were bought in
London.

"These paintings were obviously quite special to Johnston," he
says. "They were never for sale in his shop, Kent Antiques in
Armadale, but always kept at Fairhall, unframed, in a desk drawer.
Sometimes he would take them out late at night to look at them.
Occasionally he handed them round at dinner parties. When they
started to deteriorate he had them framed and put on the wall."

Company Paintings were about the everyday life of the time. They
are delicate watercolours depicting in painstaking detail such
subjects as servants and craftsmen.

Four of the paintings show different forms of travelling, from
the "Tonjon" carrying a fashionably dressed Englishwoman to the
opulent conveyances used by high-ranking Indians. All carriages are
hand-held by servants wearing the livery of the household.

Two paintings are about music, one of individual musicians, the
other of a "Nautch" or group of dancers and musicians. Runnels
first saw the paintings on a tour of the Johnston collection two
years ago led by director Nina Stanton. He was intrigued. "I wanted
to know who the people were in the paintings, where the lady in the
Tonjon was going, what the musical instruments sounded like." He
told Stanton he would find out about the paintings.

Runnels contacted experts around the world while researching
Indian Paintings - British Masters. He discovered the Johnston
collection paintings were probably painted by artists from Patna in
the 1830s, that they were a rare record of early 19th-century
India.

One memorable moment during the course of writing the book was a
visit to the Geological Survey (map-making centre) of India in
Calcutta, housed in the grand but fading 1790s building originally
constructed by the British as the United Services Club.

Here he saw more than 100 artists painting maps. "To my delight
each artist kept a picture of an old painting next to their work
bench which they would carefully copy in their breaks as a relief
from map work." Runnels produced photos of the eight Company
Paintings and was met with smiles and shouts of "Patna!
Patna!".

Runnels left the photos with them. "It is now the eight Indian
paintings from the Johnston collection that the artists in Calcutta
sketch and copy in their free moments," he says. "Our paintings
have truly come home."

Indian Paintings - British Masters can be
ordered from the Johnston collection on 9416 2515 for $20 plus
$2.50 postage. Richard Runnels will give an illustrated lecture on
the book at the Menzies Foundation in East Melbourne tomorrow at
10am and November 23 at 7pm, $20. Bookings, via the Johnston
collection, are essential.